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Sunday, March 18, 2012

This has to be a joke. Me? My book?

Last Thursday I woke up to an interesting tweet asking me about Turkish rights to my book. Naturally, I went o.O, and then I tweeted back making sure they weren't thinking of the TV series. No, it was my book they wanted and needed my email to contact me about it.

My first thought was this has to be a joke or prank. Being Human isn't rocking the tops of any charts; if anything, it's moving along at a snail's pace. Every month I get sales, but it's nothing big. My reviews are good, people think it's a unique twist on vampires, especially after the Twilight craze. (Not everyone thought sparkling vampires was awesome.)

Second thought was this had to be a scam. I googled the email address I was told to look for and found a site, but it was minimal and in another language. Another link I tried listed the agency under foreign rights for a publisher. I went to the indie author group on FB and posted about the contact. A member got back to me, saying she could look in Publisher's Marketplace since she had a subscription. She emailed me what she found, and it looked like the Turkish agency had current and legit deals with US publishers over foreign rights for books.
Third thought: WHAT DO I DO??????? Obviously, I have little knowledge of foreign rights, so it was back to google where I found some very useful information. I wrote a bunch down and decided to wait for the email and see what the guy had to say.

Friday I woke up to an email from the person I was told would contact me. The email just said a Turkish publisher wanted a copy of my book to review. Exciting, but one thing I read while googling foreign rights was do not send your book to them without signing an agreement about royalties and all that stuff.

Again, what do I do?

I need help. I went back to google and looked up agents that dealt with foreign rights and emailed a few. One had an automated response that she was on vacation. Another said sorry, she only dealt with foreign rights for her agency's clients. The third said sorry, but YA isn't the genre he represents, but if I can't find anyone to contact him about a consultation. I spent the rest of Friday looking up agents. I crafted what I hope was a professional sounding email detailing the contact I've had about my book and how I am looking for an agent for it. I emailed about a dozen agent.

Hopefully, someone will bite and I will find out what to do about this Turkish publisher. Honestly, the idea of having my book published in another language is very exciting. I would love to see that, but I know this is not something I can negotiate on my own. I crafted another, hopefully, professional email, this time to the Turkish agent who contacted me asking for more details about what would happen if the publisher likes my story and wants rights to it. Even if nothing but rejections from the agents I contacted come of it (I already have had my first official rejection. I kinda want to save it. lol!) I am giddy at the fact that someone noticed my story and contacted me. But there still is that lingering question: Why me?

Send nothing, be really careful here. If they are interested they can send you a basic contract. There should be no reason for you to send a copy, they can purchase it via Amazon unless you haven't ticked world-wide rights. Just be cautious :)

That's the kind of thing I'd be worried about...a problem with being an indie author is you're most likely not up on all the legal aspects and people know that and will try to exploit you. It's awful, but better safe than sorry my friend. Proceed with caution.